Free Trainee Superhero (Book Two) by C. H. Aalberry Page A

arm rests.
    “You and I are going hunting,” he said to
me.
    “Why me?” I asked.
    “Set a thief to find a thief.”
    He must have been desperate; I didn’t want to
catch a thief, I wanted to be one.
    “Sounds good,” I said as sincerely as I could
manage.
    Dark Fire sighed. Metal straps emerged
from the chair and locked down my arms and legs, holding me in
place.
    “You must think I’m an idiot,” he said.
    The thought had crossed my mind… right up to
the moment the chair took me prisoner. I struggled against the
straps, but I couldn’t escape. Dark Fire produced a syringe
of pink fluid and walked over to me. He injected it into my arm and
my whole body went numb for a few seconds.
    It was not a good feeling.
    “That’s a poison that will kill you in three
days,” Dark Fire said casually, “you only get the antidote
if we find our quarry.
    I can tell when people were lying, and he
wasn’t.
    “Better get on with it,” he suggested.
    Where would a supervillain hide? The world is
an enormous place with an infinity of hiding places for those of us
who can fly. My quarry had stealth, and he was smart enough to use
it. A simple search was never going to work if he didn’t want to be
found.
    So, what does a supervillain want? Answering
that was easy: power, and superhero suits are power.
    I needed to get in contact with him. His suit
had a radio receiver, but that was no good to me. My next step was
to get back into really dark parts of the ‘net where the worst of
the weapons dealers lurk. I still had my old login details, so I
looked like a proper villain again. I even made a few new purchases
while I was on there, just to keep my hand in. Besides, the Super
Corps was paying. I spent the better part of two days there before
I found what I was looking for: someone was buying every piece of
illegal superhero tech they could get their hands on, and they were
paying big money for it.
    The kind of big money that is only available
to supervillains, corrupt government officials and other people
with no conscience. Like investment bankers.
    I got in contact with the mysterious buyer
and left him a voicemail.
    “Listen,” I said, “I’m an escapee like you. I
have a suit with a power source, but it’s broken. I’ll trade it for
two hundred million U.S. dollars.”
    A fair price, I thought, for a broken suit. A
price he could afford, if he had half a brain.
    I received a reply in under ten minutes, and
we were on. I set up a meeting at midnight in a desert far away
from any people. I didn’t really care about the people, of course,
but it was easier than arguing with Dark Fire . The idea was
to let the supervillain steal the fake suit that we had packed full
of tracers and other nasty surprises.
    Or that was the plan I suggested to Dark
Fire . My actual plan involved stealing the supervillain’s suit
and then making my own escape. I had it all planned out, and I was
sure that this time I was going to succeed. Then Dark Fire called me into his office two hours before the exchange.
    “Ready, boss? We are going to nail this guy!”
I said excitedly, “Let's go get suited up!”
    Dark Fire was already in his suit, of
course; he never changed out of it. My role in the plan was to
track the villain back to his lair and ambush him. I was looking
forward to it, but not for the reasons he might have expected.
    “You still think I’m an idiot,” said Dark
Fire , and then he tasered me again.
    I woke up in Dark Fire ’s office ten
hours later. I wasn’t dead, so I suppose he must have given me the
antidote to his poison.
    “Ouch,” I said reproachfully.
    “You deserved it,” he said flatly, “Your plan
worked out fine, by the way. We got him.”
    I thought about acting naïve about why he
tasered me, but I couldn’t be bothered. It was something of a
compliment that he trusted me so little and thought me capable of
so much.
    “What happened to the guy?” I asked,
expecting that Dark Fire had acquired him